Common Core

The Heartland Institute has been at the forefront of pushing back on Common Core education standards.

New from The Heartland Institute

On April 6, 2016, Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, delivered a presentation based on his book, Drilling through the Core, to an audience in Heartland's Andrew Breitbart Freedom Cetner. Click here to watch a video of the presentation.

On March 30, 2016, The Heartland Institute's Center for Education Transformation released a Common Core Math Comparison rack card. The card displays a comparison of third grade Common Core-aligned math problem beside a traditional math problem. The back of the card provides 10 reasons to oppose Common Core. Click here or on the image to download a copy.

On March 25, 2016, The Heartland Institute's Center for Education Transformation released "Replacing Common Core: Choices and Trade-Offs" by Joseph Bast and Joy Pullmann. In this Heartland Institute Policy Brief, Bast and Pullmann discuss the trade-offs of how to replace Common Core and its associated tests completely, while maintaining rigor and enhanced local control. Click here to download a copy of the report.

On October 1, 2014, The Heartland Institute's Center for Education Transformation released "Replacing Common Core with Proven Standards of Excellence" by Heartland Senior Fellow David V. Anderson, Ph. D. This report outlines the failings within Common Core and how independent testing could be used to mitigate and provide information about its effects on learning. Click here to download a copy of the report.

On January 22, 2013, The Heartland Institute's Center for Education Transformation released "The Common Core: A Poor Choice for the States," by Joy Pullmann. In this Heartland Institute Policy Brief, Pullmann reveals some major weaknesses of Common Core. The program represents a major centralization of control over curriculum, contrary to the American tradition of decentralized control and funding. Click here to download a copy of the report.

Fight the Common Core

The Heartland Institute has been at the forefront of pushing back on Common Core education standards — a Washington-led scheme to take away the long-held control of curriculum from states, school boards, teachers, and parents. Our effort is led by Lennie Jarratt, project manager of the Center for Transforming Education, Teresa Mull, managing editor of School Reform Newsand her predecessor at the newspaper, Heartland Senior Fellow Joy Pullmann.

Common Core State Standards for K-12 schools were adopted with little public debate by every state but Alaska, Nebraska, Texas, and Virginia in 2010, part of the price of getting federal dollars under the Obama administration’s “Race to the Top” program. Now educators, parents, and policymakers are taking a closer look at what they agreed to, and many don’t like what they see.

Common Core has become toxic in most states. It has now been repealed or being revised in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia. Unfortunately many of these states are just renaming the standards to rebrand them while keeping them mostly identical to Common Core. Michigan is currently attempting to replace its Common Core standards with the pre-Common Core Massachussetts standards which were ranked as one of the best in the nation.

In addition to moving away from Common Core, states are also dropping the associated testing. Only seven states remain in the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) tests. The consortium started with 26 states. Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) started with 27 governing and associate member states. SBAC currently has 15 governing states and two associate members.